Luna--Wolf Moon--A Novel Page 19

  ‘Well, drive!’ Sister Maria Aparaceida shouted.

  ‘Where’s his backpack?’ Alexia asked. He had pestered and pestered and pestered her for the Capitan Brasil backpack and when she relented and bought it for him he had been so pleased and proud he had almost slept inside the thing. It was gone.

  ‘Alexia!’ Sister Maria Aparaceida shouted. Alexia swung into the seat. Sirens.

  She swung into the ambulance bay at Barra D’or. Armed security surrounded the pick-up.

  ‘Get a gurney!’ Alexia screamed at the solid, well-fed security faces. Hands stayed other hands reaching for weapons. They knew the Queen of Pipes. Alexia burst into the Emergency Room reception. She leaned over the reception desk.

  ‘I’ve got an eleven-year-old kid in the pick-up, half his head is in. He needs immediate medical attention.’

  ‘I’ll need your insurance details,’ the receptionist said. She had flowers on her white desk.

  ‘I don’t have insurance.’

  ‘Barra Day Hospital does offer Medicare services,’ the receptionist said. Alexia snatched the pay terminal, held it up to her eye, pressed her thumb to it, swivelled it back to the receptionist.

  ‘Will that cover it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get him in.’

  The nurses called security to prise Alexia away from Caio as the crash nurses wheeled him.

  ‘Lê, let them do their work,’ the security men said. ‘As soon as it’s safe, the doctor will let you see him.’

  She sat. She fretted. She curled up one way on the uncomfortable waiting room seat, then another, then another and none of them was right for her bones. She went back and forth to the vending machines. She glared death at anyone who so much as turned an eye on her. After two and a half hours the doctor came for her.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘We’ve stabilised him. Can I have a word?’

  The doctor took her to a private consulting room. She laid a piece of stained paper on the bed.

  ‘We found this in his pocket. Is this his writing?’

  ‘He writes better than that.’

  ‘It’s addressed to you.’

  An address, and a signature. Alexia did not recognise the signature but she knew the name. An infant’s hand-writing, an adult implication.

  ‘Can I take this?’

  ‘That depends if you want to involve the police.’

  ‘The police don’t work for people like me and Caio.’

  ‘Then take it.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor. I’ll be back, but I have a piece of business to conduct first.’

  * * *

  Only the new boys stared as Alexia walked into the gym. The older men, who knew who she was, paused at their weights and punch-bags and nodded in respect. She strode past the desk and the sign that said Men Only, all the way past the sauna, the whirlpool and the dark maze to the office at the rear. Two escoltas in gym T-shirts stepped in front of her.

  ‘I would like to see Seu Osvaldo.’

  The younger escolta was about to open his stupid mouth and refuse her; the older laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Of course.’ The guard mumbled into a concealed microphone. A nod. ‘Please go in, Senhora Corta.’

  Seu Osvaldo’s office was as cosy and compact as the cabin of a sailing schooner. Brass and polished wood. Framed photographs of MMA fighters covered the walls. A well equipped bar stood beneath the shuttered window. Chinese electro-pop hovered in the air, present but not so emphatic as to break Seu Osvaldo’s concentration. He was a great bear of a man, tall and heavy, spilling out of his chair behind his desk, where he studied MMA matches on an array of old desk monitors. The air was conditioned cool and faintly mentholated but he sweated heavily. Seu Osvaldo could not tolerate heat and daylight. He was dressed in a pair of well-pressed white shorts and the T-shirt of his gym.

  He tapped one of his old school screens.

  ‘This boy, I think I might buy him. He’s a vicious little fuck.’ Seu Osvaldo’s voice was luxuriant and deep, thickened with the rattle of childhood tuberculosis. The legend in Barra was that he once trained to be a Catholic priest. Alexia believed it. ‘What do you think?’ He swivelled the screen to show the fighters in the cage.

  ‘Which one am I looking at, Seu Osvaldo?’

  He laughed and with one graceful gesture folded all his screens flat to his desk.

  ‘You’d have made a good fighter. You have the discipline and the focus. And the rage. What can I do for you, Queen of Pipes?’

  ‘I have been wronged, Seu Osvaldo.’

  ‘I know that you have. How is your brother?’

  ‘His skull is fractured in three places. There’s been severe concussion and significant blood loss into the brain. The doctors say damage is inevitable. The question is how much.’

  Seu Osvaldo crossed himself.

  ‘How will he be?’

  ‘He may require care for the rest of life. The doctors said he may never fully recover.’

  ‘Shit,’ Seu Osvaldo muttered in his deep, rich voice. ‘If it’s money…’

  ‘I’m not asking for money.’

  ‘I’m glad. I would not want to charge you interest.’

  ‘The Gulartes have sent me a message. I would like to send them one back.’

  ‘It would be an honour, Alexia.’ Seu Osvaldo leaned forward. ‘How emphatically would you like your message delivered?’

  ‘I want them never to threaten my family or anyone ever again. I want their water empire wiped out.’

  Seu Osvaldo sat back again. His chair creaked. Oily sweat beaded on his bald head, though the office was chill to Alexia.

  ‘You are the Iron Hand.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Alexia said.

  ‘You’ve never heard that? It’s a Corta family name. My family and yours are old friends. My grandfather bought Mercedes from your great-grandfather.’

  ‘I know we had money once.’

  ‘It’s a Minas Gerais nickname, from the mines. The one with the grip and the will – and the ambition – to take what they want from the world. The Iron Hand. Your great-aunt, the one who went to the Moon, she was a true Miniera. The Mão de Ferro.’

  ‘Adriana Corta. She cut my family off. All the money in the moon, and she cut us off.’

  ‘And you forgot you were ever called Iron Hand. Maybe she’s just waiting. I will do this for you, Alexia Corta. I am very upset about Caio. A kid … Rules have been broken. I will make sure the Gularte brothers enjoy real pain before they die.’

  ‘Thank you, Seu Osvaldo.’

  ‘I do this for the respect I bear to the Queen of Pipes. We all owe you. But, please understand, I can’t be seen not to require a payment for my services. Even from you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My mother – Jesus and Mary be kind to her – is very comfortable in her old age. She has a nice apartment, she has a sea view, she has electricity almost all the time. She has a veranda and a chauffeur to take her to mass or cocktails or to play bridge with her friends. She wants one thing. I think you can address that want.’

  ‘Name it, Seu Osvaldo.’

  ‘She has always wanted a water feature. Fountains and cherubs and those things that blow horns. Shells and baths for birds. The sound of falling water. This would complete her life. Can you arrange that, Rainha de tubos?’

  ‘It would be an honour to bring a little water into an old lady’s life, Seu Osvaldo. Can I ask one more favour?’

  ‘If you can start within a week.’

  ‘I want Caio’s Capitan Brasil backpack.’

  * * *

  Norton came to the apartment.

  ‘You don’t come to the apartment,’ Alexia said, the bar on the door and her left eye to the gap. She let the concealed taser slip down behind the door and toed it away. In this time between asking the favour of Seu Osvaldo and his execution of it, uninvited hammering on the door met an armed response. The corridor cams showed only Norton. That meant nothing. T
he Gulartes could be holding his family hostage. Marisa, pressed close to the wall, scooped up the taser. Always have back-up.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You don’t come to the apartment.’

  ‘Well, where can I talk to you?’

  The gazebo. Marisa put a message out on the tower network and the rooftop nest was empty by the time Alexia and Norton made it to the stop of the stairs. A whisper of wind down from the hills made the evening air tolerable. Alexia curled up on the divan. She had thrown six Antarcticas into a cool sack and casually opened one on a wooden rail. She offered it to Norton. He looked away. The tendons of his neck, his throat, the veins in his forehead were tight with anger. Alexia took a swig from the bottle. Dear cold sacramental beer.

  ‘Why did you come to the apartment?’

  ‘Why did you go to Seu Osvaldo?’

  ‘It’s business. You don’t ask me about business.’

  Norton paced. He was a pacer. Do you know how restless your hands are when you’re angry? Alexia thought.

  ‘And I don’t come to the apartment,’ Norton said. ‘Was there a contract I should have signed?’

  ‘That’s glib, Norton.’ Alexia had never been able to bear others’ laughter. Norton understood this: never make a joke out of Alexia Corta.

  ‘I know why people go to Seu Osvaldo. Why didn’t you come to me?’

  A true, spontaneous laugh burst from Alexia.

  ‘You?’

  ‘I’m in security.’

  ‘Norton, you’re not in Seu Osvaldo’s league.’

  ‘Seu Osvaldo has a price. I don’t want you owing Seu Osvaldo.’

  ‘Seu Osvaldo’s eighty-year-old mamãe is going to have the best water feature in Barra on her balcony. Cherubs and everything.’

  ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ Norton snapped and the dark flash of his anger, the knife-quick turn of his passion stole Alexia’s breath. He was beautiful-angry. ‘How do you think it makes me look if every time you need help, you go running to Seu Osvaldo? Who’s going to hire a man who can’t look after his woman?’

  ‘Norton, be very careful here.’ Alexia set the beer bottle down half drunk. ‘You don’t look after me. I am not your woman. If your security-jock friends disrespect you for that, either you get new friends or a new me.’

  As the words were spoken, Alexia wished them unspoken.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Norton said.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ Alexia mimicked, knowing what she was saying was the worst of all possible words, unable to stop saying them. Junior, when he was alive, used to say she would fight with her own shadow. ‘Why don’t you just make your own decision for once?’

  ‘Well what I want is to go someplace else,’ Norton yelled. He stormed off.

  ‘Fine!’ Alexia shouted at his back. The roof door slammed. She would not follow him down. She would not even indulge in a killing riposte down the stairwell. Let him come to her. ‘Fine.’

  She waited three minutes, four. Five. Then she heard the sound of a scrambler bike engine in the parking lot below. She didn’t need to look over the parapet to know it was Norton’s. The infantile engine-rev sound he had patched over the electric motor was unmistakable.

  ‘Fucker,’ she said and slung the half-drunk bottle of beer the length of the roof top. It smashed against the concrete coaming. ‘Fucker.’

  The roof door creaked open.

  ‘Lê?’

  Marisa joined Alexia in the gazebo. They watched the half-moon rise out of the Atlantic. On the avenida the street lights flickered and went out.

  ‘Hope he crashes,’ Alexia said.

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You won’t let anyone laugh at you but you laugh at him.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, irmazinha.’

  Marisa swung her legs. Alexia reached up a dewed beer from the cooler.

  ‘Open it for me.’ Marisa had been drinking beer since she was ten.

  The bottle cap spun in the moonlight.

  * * *

  She loved the feel of Norton’s fresh shaved balls. She loved the smooth suppleness of the skin, the softness of the oil; how they felt like something independent from his body, like a small, nuzzling animal. How they lay heavy in her palm, the way she could circle the scrotum with her thumb and forefinger, the yield and tightening of his body in surprise when she gently stretched them. She loved their fullness and vulnerability; how with a shoelace or some rubber bands or hair ties she could turn them into two glorious swollen apples of lust. She liked to flick her fingernail against his tight tied balls. The first time she did it he almost concussed himself on the headboard.

  Alexia folded her hand around the shaved shaft of his cock. Norton was big; smooth and oiled, his cock was a vain monster, a rain forest giant standing proud from cleared undergrowth. Big and elegantly curved. She had worked out long ago how to keep him on edge, bringing him to the brink of orgasm only to pull him back, by the manipulation of her closed hand over his glorious cock. She folded his head into the palm of her hand, ran her thumb along the thick line of his corona. He moaned and lolled back on to the pillows.

  This was how she knew it wasn’t goodbye sex. He had shaved for her.

  She pressed the ball of her thumb to the little triangle where the two curves of the cock head – like a heart, she thought – met the pee slit. Coraçãozinho was her name for it. She didn’t know if it had a scientific name but she did know that when she touched him there, rubbed him there, flicked him there, vibrated him there, this square centimetre of nerve endings gave her absolute power over him.

  The rest of the guys in his security team must have seen that he shaved for her.

  They could pick up an idea or two.

  She had a fantasy that one day she would lather him and shave him, then oil and work him closely over with an old-fashioned cut-throat razor until he was so smooth she could take each ball into her mouth like a doce. She imagined the fear and trust and delight on his face.

  She bent low and touched the tip of her tongue to coraçãozinho.

  Norton jerked as if mains voltage had run through his urethra. His abs tightened, his ass cheeks clenched. Now she had his attention. Alexia guided him to where she really wanted his Little Heart to go.

  Afterwards she rolled out of his bed and padded to the bathroom, then to the fridge.

  ‘Any guarana?’

  ‘Behind the Bohemia.’

  The fridge light flickered as she squatted in the blue glow, shuffling beer cans. A man’s fridge. Beer, coffee, soft drinks. Sex always affected her fluid balance. Liquid out, liquid in. She popped the can and slid back under the black sheet.

  Black bed linen. New, for her. Clean bedsheets for back-together-again sex. Jesus and Mary. Little silver archipelagos.

  He lay on his side, one leg folded, the other stretched straight, hugging the sheet to him. He knew it made him look cute. His skin was three shades darker than hers – castana-escura to her canela. She liked to look at him.

  The lights went out.

  ‘Shit. Give me a minute.’ Crouching naked, Norton scuttled around the room lighting the aromatic candles Alexia brought him. They kept the stale male smell down. Alexia preferred Norton’s apartment by candlelight. She did not like to see it in too high a resolution.

  She really needed to get herself a better boyfriend.

  ‘Caio’s back home,’ she said. The guarana was working now. Sugar and caffeine.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’ll be two months out of school. I’m arranging tutors. His right side is affected. He’ll have to learn to become left handed.’

  ‘Shit. I’d like to see him.’

  A thing she liked about Norton: how he treated Caio like a kid brother. A thing she did not like about Norton: that he tried to teach Caio to be like him. A malandro.

  ‘You can call at the apartment to do that.’

  ‘Thank you. I appreciate that, Lê.’
/>
  He made her melt when he dropped the man-theatre and spoke what he felt.

  ‘What happened to the Gulartes?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’ Bodies in the concrete footings of the new commuter rail viaduct. ‘No one will be threatening Caio again.’

  ‘Lê…’

  Alexia rolled on to her side. Norton was shy of her eye contact. It was another tool by which she could control him.

  ‘We used to have another family name. Did you know that? Mão de Ferro. It’s an old Minas Gerais name for the big one, the serious one. The one who does what needs to be done. I was the Iron Hand. So shut up and never ask me again.’

  Norton sat up abruptly, jostling Alexia’s arm and slopping sticky guarana over her breasts.

  ‘Fuck, Norton…’

  ‘No, listen listen listen. I’m working for a Corta. New contract, started yesterday. Thanks for asking. You always said there weren’t many of you, no one knows where the name comes from, no one really knows where you came from. Well, this is a Corta and he comes from the moon.’

  ‘No one comes from the moon.’ Alexia felt around for a tissue that wasn’t creamy with cum. This man needs to learn the necessity of wet wipes.

  ‘That’s not quite right, Lê. Milton came from the moon.’

  ‘Okay, workers come back from the moon.’ Barra had cheered when one of their own made it to the moon to mine helium-3. He came back to Earth before gravity withered his bones with enough of a fortune to buy his way out of Barra, settled in Zona Sul and was murdered a year later. All his wealth was electronic. The killers didn’t get a centavo.

  ‘He’s not a worker. He was born there.’

  Alexia jerked upright. The can of guarana spilt over Norton’s black sheets. She rolled over Norton to straddle him, pushed her vaj hard against his cock.

  ‘Who is he? Tell me.’

  ‘Something Corta. Lucas Corta.’

  ‘Lucas Corta’s dead. He was killed when the Mackenzies took out Corta Hélio.’

  ‘Maybe that was a different—’

  ‘There is only one Lucas Corta. Do you know anything about the moon?’

  ‘I know they play handball and you can fight people to the death but other than that I don’t really care what goes on up there.’